Trawling Wikipedia entries for upcoming TV shows recently, as I do to screw any last vestige of expectation from the viewing experience, I came upon a startling fact. Peep Show, which started its fourth series on Friday, was rumoured to be close to cancellation last year. What might these hypothetical axe-wielders have been thinking? Peep Show is only the best British comedy show of the decade, after all.

Don't believe it? That's probably because you've never heard of it - or have, but just haven't watched it. If so, let me run you up to speed: Mark (David Mitchell) and Jeremy (Robert Webb) are an anally retentive loan manager and deeply untalented waster, who live together in a flat in Croydon, south London.

Mark lusts after his colleague Sophie in an unnervingly methodical fashion, while Jeremy flits from one sordid, gormless sexual encounter to the next, including a marriage of convenience to a bohemian American and a drug-fuelled homosexual encounter with his best mate Super Hans. It's all presented in point-of-view shots and voiceovers, hence the title.

It's also brain-fryingly funny. Still, best comedy of the noughties? Let's consider the competition. Little Britain? Dizzyingly overrated, although sadly Matt Lucas and David Walliams have reached the status of comedy royalty simply by rewriting a pilot's worth of half-decent sketches ad infinitum.

There's stiffer competition from The Office. Both series follow the template set by Friends, in allowing their characters' situation to alter from one episode to the next, although where The Office managed a dramatic narrative for two series and a couple of specials, Peep Show has now carried on for three and a bit series without letting the quality slip. In the new episode, Mark fretted over how to tell his now-fiancee Sophie that he didn't love her, under pressure from her game-hunting, alcoholic father - a complete inversion of the initial premise. Jeremy, true to witless form, just screwed Sophie's mum.

Where The Office relied on its actors, a Peep Show script will, guaranteed, have more punchlines per minute, a testament to the writing team of Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong. Spaced, whose second series appeared in 2001, is ruled out on similar grounds of proven longevity, while The Thick Of It - for which Bain and Armstrong also write - doesn't have the same everyman appeal.

The Mitchell/Webb/Bain/Armstrong axis deserves its place in posterity for creating the richest, most human, enduring, and hilariously quotable sitcom of the decade. Nathan Barley alone matched its perfect love/hate relationship with the 21st century - although only for one series.

Peep Show is fantastic, no argument. Doesn't quite top Spaced though. intervaldrinks

Peep Show has got better and better as it has become less concerned with being "edgy" and has allowed us to care about the characters. It's brilliant, and Friday's episode was a great showcase for new viewers. But I'm afraid Spaced still pips it. annawaits1

I can't relate to Peep Show's humour, yet my girlfriend laughs out loud every other second! On the other hand, Little Britain I find quite amusing, though it will never be in the same league as The League of Gentlemen. neutralground

I hope that this will be the last series, because I'm not sure how much more you can do with the characters without it becoming a bit forced.haporth

Whatever happened to comedies that actually made you laugh rather than curl up in embarrassment? neu75

I watched two episodes of Peep Show from the first series and just couldn't get on with it. Any humour in the script seemed buried by the fact that it's dominated by two intensely dislikable characters. bemused2

Also on this week's arts blog:

· Censoring stories Maureen Freely on the Hanif Kureishi short story pulled by the BBC